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What are some of your worst experiences with a web host?
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What are some of your worst experiences with a web host?

ForwardWebForwardWeb Member, Host Rep

Whether it was with a shared web host, VPS, dedicated or reseller, what are some of the worst experiences you have experienced with a web host? Lets hear some horror stories and what lessons if any you took from the experience.

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Comments

  • hostgator. they charged me for another 3 years after the first 3 (i know... i feel bad for myself the first time) and then gave no refunds after cancellation.

  • ForwardWebForwardWeb Member, Host Rep

    @seizure said:
    hostgator. they charged me for another 3 years after the first 3 (i know... i feel bad for myself the first time) and then gave no refunds after cancellation.

    Ouch, thats a tough one. How long ago was this? Shame to think HG at one point was pretty a solid web host. I wonder what Brent is up to these days and if he has any regrets about the sale.

  • BlueVM had Feathur (a new and innovative control panel), and then it was sold to ChicagoVPS getting insane downtime.

    Aboveclouds.co.uk (@Jacob) was dissolved and IP addresses nulled in one night (both IPv4 and IPv6). Even though Aboveclouds still has an active website, if you create a VPS you can not access it because all IP is nulled. There is no support ticket system.

  • imokimok Member

    Hostgator making all my PHP files downloadable for almost 3 days. I left after that.

    Thanked by 1alilet
  • imok said: Hostgator making all my PHP files downloadable

    Had a similar issue with Westhost lately.

    I can't say there's a host that's really pissed me off, it's just the usual run of the mill stuff that you come to expect.

    • Host disappears or doesn't respond to tickets

    • Hosts who give you canned responses like 'moving you to a faster server'

    • Hosts with an attitude problem (only experienced one of these)

    By biggest peeve is ones that change your IP and don't notify you (or their email can't get through because they've poorly managed their service). 2nd biggest peeve is hosts that change your IP.

  • imokimok Member

    Own datacenter at work giving 96GB RAM to a small Wordpress website.

  • HarambeHarambe Member, Host Rep

    3.5 day outage due to cascading RAID failure and then problems with R1Soft restoring at snail speeds.

    Had a bunch of similar experiences with shared hosts, with varying downtime (24-36 hours minimum up to 3-4 days). They solve a bad failure pretty quick in terms of getting new hardware up, but restoring millions of little files ends up taking days, and it's luck of the draw where your account is in that queue.

    Learned pretty quick after that to always have regular cPanel backups because almost all hosts extended an offer to recreate an empty account and restore a user-supplied backup.

  • ForwardWebForwardWeb Member, Host Rep

    @Harambe said:

    Learned pretty quick after that to always have regular cPanel backups

    That is a great lesson to be learned, yet one that I unfortunately still see many people having to learn the hard way.

  • HarambeHarambe Member, Host Rep

    @ForwardWeb said:

    @Harambe said:

    Learned pretty quick after that to always have regular cPanel backups

    That is a great lesson to be learned, yet one that I unfortunately still see many people having to learn the hard way.

    It's not like cPanel makes it super easy to have offsite backups. All 'automated' solutions are a pain in the ass, and anything requiring you login and hit the backup button then download isn't super useful. Unless something has changed in the last year or two since I last took a close look.

  • cjdcjd Member

    The hardware RAID controller wasn't working in a RapidSwitch server with a RAID 1 setup so the disks weren't in sync. No one noticed and one day a disk died so RapidSwitch put a new one in and the array was rebuilt with 4+ years old data. There were no up to date backups. Good times.

  • ForwardWebForwardWeb Member, Host Rep

    @Harambe said:

    @ForwardWeb said:

    @Harambe said:

    Learned pretty quick after that to always have regular cPanel backups

    That is a great lesson to be learned, yet one that I unfortunately still see many people having to learn the hard way.

    It's not like cPanel makes it super easy to have offsite backups. All 'automated' solutions are a pain in the ass, and anything requiring you login and hit the backup button then download isn't super useful. Unless something has changed in the last year or two since I last took a close look.

    Thats true, however there are some decent automated solutions for some content management systems like WP. Still, its not too difficult to remember to download a quick back-up via cPanel. I see many clients who will load their website, yet never bother to make a single back-up of their site.

  • ForwardWebForwardWeb Member, Host Rep

    @cjd said:
    The hardware RAID controller wasn't working in a RapidSwitch server with a RAID 1 setup so the disks weren't in sync. No one noticed and one day a disk died so RapidSwitch put a new one in and the array was rebuilt with 4+ years old data. There were no up to date backups. Good times.

    Aw man, that sounds like an absolute nightmare. What were you using the server for?

  • @imok said:
    Hostgator making all my PHP files downloadable for almost 3 days. I left after that.

    We have a winner here.

  • HarambeHarambe Member, Host Rep
    edited August 2017

    @ForwardWeb said:

    Thats true, however there are some decent automated solutions for some content management systems like WP. Still, its not too difficult to remember to download a quick back-up via cPanel. I see many clients who will load their website, yet never bother to make a single back-up of their site.

    Yeah, backing up site files and backing up CMS' are quite straightforward. However gets a bit tougher when you utilize other aspects of cPanel such as mail, dns, etc.

    If you strip down your shared hosting to just hosting a site + DB it's simple, but if you utilize other features it can be harder to re-populate them. Even simple things like: sure your emails are backed up using an IMAP sync/archive tool or having local copies, but recreating accounts + mail forwards for dozens of addresses adds a lot to restore time if you have to manually re-populate due to not having a recent full cPanel backup.

    Just wish there were some straightforward automated backup solutions. If anyone has suggestions for easily automating full off-site cPanel backups I'm game.

    I primarily use/recommend external DNS and external mail services so this doesn't impact anything close to mission critical of mine - but would help with non-technical friends/family I have on reseller accounts.

  • ForwardWebForwardWeb Member, Host Rep

    @Harambe said:

    @ForwardWeb said:

    Thats true, however there are some decent automated solutions for some content management systems like WP. Still, its not too difficult to remember to download a quick back-up via cPanel. I see many clients who will load their website, yet never bother to make a single back-up of their site.

    Yeah, backing up site files and backing up CMS' are quite straightforward. However gets a bit tougher when you utilize other aspects of cPanel such as mail, dns, etc.

    If you strip down your shared hosting to just hosting a site + DB it's simple, but if you utilize other features it can be harder to re-populate them. Even simple things like: sure your emails are backed up using an IMAP sync/archive tool or having local copies, but recreating accounts + mail forwards for dozens of addresses adds a lot to restore time if you have to manually re-populate due to not having a recent full cPanel backup.

    Just wish there were some straightforward automated backup solutions. If anyone has suggestions for easily automating full off-site cPanel backups I'm game.

    I primarily use/recommend external DNS and external mail services so this doesn't impact anything close to mission critical of mine - but would help with non-technical friends/family I have on reseller accounts.

    I've never tried these before, except for WHMeasy awhile back, but here are some 3rd party options that might work well:

    https://www.siteautobackup.com/cart.php
    https://whmeasybackup.com/

  • MikePTMikePT Moderator, Patron Provider, Veteran

    JetBackup is pretty awesome for DR. The self restore option is awesome as well.

  • @Harambe said:

    @ForwardWeb said:

    @Harambe said:

    Learned pretty quick after that to always have regular cPanel backups

    That is a great lesson to be learned, yet one that I unfortunately still see many people having to learn the hard way.

    It's not like cPanel makes it super easy to have offsite backups. All 'automated' solutions are a pain in the ass, and anything requiring you login and hit the backup button then download isn't super useful. Unless something has changed in the last year or two since I last took a close look.

    I am looking to install cdp.me on a cheap kvm to backup some files. It do have full cPanel options if that might help you

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    The time every single reseller server was down for like 12 hours, followed by corruption of almost every innodb database on every server when they came back up.

    Except I wasn't a customer, and it's another HG story.

    Thanked by 1JahAGR
  • FranciscoFrancisco Top Host, Host Rep, Veteran

    @jarland said:
    The time every single reseller server was down for like 12 hours, followed by corruption of almost every innodb database on every server when they came back up.

    Except I wasn't a customer, and it's another HG story.

    "hey guys I got a job at digitalocean runs for the door"

    Francisco

  • HarambeHarambe Member, Host Rep

    @jetchirag said:

    I am looking to install cdp.me on a cheap kvm to backup some files. It do have full cPanel options if that might help you

    Looks like it hasn't been updated in years though https://github.com/PetaByet/cdp

  • @Harambe said:

    @jetchirag said:

    I am looking to install cdp.me on a cheap kvm to backup some files. It do have full cPanel options if that might help you

    Looks like it hasn't been updated in years though https://github.com/PetaByet/cdp

    It's the same thing holding me back. I was thinking of making it fully limited to my IP something if there's a security issue. Or Could write one but not of much use. I also doubt if it uses cPanel latest api or old

  • bluehost/hostgator/godaddy/1and1/hostwinds/many others all suck suck suck.

    That's why I run my own dedicated servers now. I haven't had shared hosting from those major sucking hosters in years.

  • @WSS uploaded a bunch of scat porn once. Man I was sick for days and days and days.....

  • HostSlim NL Colocation, they only help you up to the amount you have paid, meaning they will help you once and if it gets to a point where they can't be bothered due to the amount you are paying, they reply telling you its not worth it and will be cancelling your contract.

  • Has to be that now EIG brands are not giving pro rated refunds for customers. Not sure how that is legal but they do have a large legal team to tell them yes or no. Seems shady, after 30 days you can't request a refund. So you're stuck for 3 years. Good for them, but bad for customers.

  • WSSWSS Member

    @WebHostingNinja said:
    Has to be that now EIG brands are not giving pro rated refunds for customers. Not sure how that is legal but they do have a large legal team to tell them yes or no. Seems shady, after 30 days you can't request a refund. So you're stuck for 3 years. Good for them, but bad for customers.

    If their service fails to work for the terms and conditions outlined within the document the user agreed to, I'm sure there'd be a loopho... ohlookhere.

  • @lnx1001 said:
    bluehost/hostgator/godaddy/1and1/hostwinds/many others all suck suck suck.

    That's why I run my own dedicated servers now. I haven't had shared hosting from those major sucking hosters in years.

    lol , those providers were once in my mind , but eventually i went for namecheap , now seems i was lucky not to get them ...

  • @qtwrk said:
    lol , those providers were once in my mind , but eventually i went for namecheap , now seems i was lucky not to get them ...

    Namecheap hosting? It suuuuuuuucks. Hostwinds is way better than Namecheap.

  • @vovler said:

    @qtwrk said:
    lol , those providers were once in my mind , but eventually i went for namecheap , now seems i was lucky not to get them ...

    Namecheap hosting? It suuuuuuuucks. Hostwinds is way better than Namecheap.

    well , except the renewal price is little bit high , I don't see any downside of it , specially the support is best support I have ever had.

    Thanked by 1Junkless
  • When I started messing around with remote servers (since I home hosted everything) I bought a VPS Classic from OVH. It would go offline for 2 hours a day multiple times a week, I would send a ticket or call asking why my server was offline for no apparent reason to just be told to wait for it to come back. The server was running only a Teamspeak server and a very low traffic static web page, nothing intensive.

    Since they refused to fix it I cancelled it and moved to a Hetzner dedicated instead. Never touched OVH since, not sure if their new VPS line up is any better than what I experienced.

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